4 ms·

For anyone here who loves i3, but has always had trouble getting full integration to work on their laptop ( sleep, screen brightness, etc. ), check out the Rego

by Naac 7y ago

For anyone here who loves i3, but has always had trouble getting full integration to work on their laptop ( sleep, screen brightness, etc. ), check out the Regolith project[0] It's a curation of several tools combined with i3 that gives a pretty fantastic gnome/i3 experience. Similar to spacemacs and emacs. [0] https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/

ckrailo 7y ago
+1 for regolith and the quality Slack community around it! Ken is awesome!
Symmetry 7y ago
I tried that for a while and I did find the integration very well done. I ended up going back to my automatic-tiling Gnome/Xmonad ways (thanks Gekkio!) but that was all about window manager preferences themselves rather than any fault in the Regolith project.
bombela 7y ago
I have been using the mate desktop daemons to handle all of this. Works quite well. See my comment with more details there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22302834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22302834
thunderbong 7y ago
This is really nice. The key bindings out of the box are really useful.
mttyng 7y ago
This looks cool. I didn’t immediately see anything mentioned, but can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? Also, is this really only for Ubuntu?
- Naac 7y ago
  >> can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Yes. >> Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? I'm not sure what you mean. The Ubuntu package provided lets you select this desktop from the login screen ( as opposed to i3, Plasma, or Gnome ). This is essentially a new Desktop Environment, made up of gnome and i3. >> Also, is this really only for Ubuntu? Unfortunately yes. I've tried looking at packaging this for Arch Linux, but it looks like quite a bit of dependencies are forked ( i3blocks is now i3xrocks ). Not everything is pushed upstream. Getting this to work on non-ubuntu based distributions looks tricky if you're not familiar with packaging already.
reciprocornous 7y ago
If you are looking for a distro with i3 preinstalled, Manjaro i3 edition is another option. https://manjaro.org/download/#i3 https://manjaro.org/download/#i3
- trenchgun 7y ago
  I can recommend that.
tomxor 7y ago
> getting full integration to work on their laptop ( sleep, screen brightness, etc. ) I managed to golf some tiny generic inline bash scripts that fit directly inside my i3 config for screen brightness and keyboard brightness using /sys/class with generic name matching and no hardcoded values. They do require an external sudoers entry for each /sys/class unfortunately but that's because they require root perms by default. These have served me well across multiple desktops and laptops without needing to customization for each piece of hardware. I can post if any interest...
- aunetx 7y ago
  Yup, if you can post it, it will be greatly appreciated! I honestly find it hard to configure i3, especially for brightness...
  - tomxor 7y ago
    Sorry for delay: In your i3config for screen and keyboard... bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec "sys='/sys/class/backlight/*backlight';\ bri=$(cat ${sys}/bri*); max=$(cat ${sys}/max*);\ val=$(($bri - $max / 32)); val=$(($val < 0 ? 0 : $val));\ echo $val | sudo tee ${sys}/bri*;" bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec "sys='/sys/class/backlight/*backlight';\ bri=$(cat ${sys}/bri*); max=$(cat ${sys}/max*);\ val=$(($bri + $max / 32)); val=$(($val > $max ? $max : $val));\ echo $val | sudo tee ${sys}/bri*;" bindsym XF86KbdBrightnessDown exec "sys='/sys/class/leds/*backlight';\ bri=$(cat ${sys}/bri*); max=$(cat ${sys}/max*);\ val=$(($bri - $max / 32)); val=$(($val < 0 ? 0 : $val));\ echo $val | sudo tee ${sys}/bri*;" bindsym XF86KbdBrightnessUp exec "sys='/sys/class/leds/*backlight';\ bri=$(cat ${sys}/bri*); max=$(cat ${sys}/max*);\ val=$(($bri + $max / 32)); val=$(($val > $max ? $max : $val));\ echo $val | sudo tee ${sys}/bri*;" The only annoying things is that you will need to add NOPASSWD sudoers entries separately for: /usr/bin/tee /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness and /usr/bin/tee /sys/class/leds/*/brightness These are the only complex part of my i3config, it might seem a bit lengthy compared to installing xbacklight but for me that tool could only ever fake it by changing the pixels rather than the backlight (on every piece of hardware I have tried). The nice thing about scripting /sys/class directly is that other than the permissions it is self contained and you can easily adapt above to any other stuff it presents on your particular piece of hardware. The value 32 is the number of divisions over the range, so it should be consistent across different hardware, but you may want to adjust it to taste still. ... awaiting more golfing like a sed oneliner :P i wrote this quite a long time ago.
cyberbanjo 7y ago
This sounds great. I've used an i3 dmenu setup and is was nice. Re configuring however sounds unpleasant.

by Naac 7y ago

ckrailo 7y ago

+1 for regolith and the quality Slack community around it! Ken is awesome!

Symmetry 7y ago

I tried that for a while and I did find the integration very well done. I ended up going back to my automatic-tiling Gnome/Xmonad ways (thanks Gekkio!) but that was all about window manager preferences themselves rather than any fault in the Regolith project.

bombela 7y ago

I have been using the mate desktop daemons to handle all of this. Works quite well. See my comment with more details there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22302834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22302834

thunderbong 7y ago

This is really nice. The key bindings out of the box are really useful.

mttyng 7y ago

This looks cool. I didn’t immediately see anything mentioned, but can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? Also, is this really only for Ubuntu?

Naac 7y ago
>> can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Yes. >> Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? I'm not sure what you mean. The Ubuntu package provided lets you select this desktop from the login screen ( as opposed to i3, Plasma, or Gnome ). This is essentially a new Desktop Environment, made up of gnome and i3. >> Also, is this really only for Ubuntu? Unfortunately yes. I've tried looking at packaging this for Arch Linux, but it looks like quite a bit of dependencies are forked ( i3blocks is now i3xrocks ). Not everything is pushed upstream. Getting this to work on non-ubuntu based distributions looks tricky if you're not familiar with packaging already.

reciprocornous 7y ago

If you are looking for a distro with i3 preinstalled, Manjaro i3 edition is another option. https://manjaro.org/download/#i3 https://manjaro.org/download/#i3

trenchgun 7y ago
I can recommend that.

tomxor 7y ago

> getting full integration to work on their laptop ( sleep, screen brightness, etc. ) I managed to golf some tiny generic inline bash scripts that fit directly inside my i3 config for screen brightness and keyboard brightness using /sys/class with generic name matching and no hardcoded values. They do require an external sudoers entry for each /sys/class unfortunately but that's because they require root perms by default. These have served me well across multiple desktops and laptops without needing to customization for each piece of hardware. I can post if any interest...

aunetx 7y ago
Yup, if you can post it, it will be greatly appreciated! I honestly find it hard to configure i3, especially for brightness...
- tomxor 7y ago
  Sorry for delay: In your i3config for screen and keyboard... bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec "sys='/sys/class/backlight/*backlight';\ bri=$(cat ${sys}/bri*); max=$(cat ${sys}/max*);\ val=$(($bri - $max / 32)); val=$(($val < 0 ? 0 : $val));\ echo $val | sudo tee ${sys}/bri*;" bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec "sys='/sys/class/backlight/*backlight';\ bri=$(cat ${sys}/bri*); max=$(cat ${sys}/max*);\ val=$(($bri + $max / 32)); val=$(($val > $max ? $max : $val));\ echo $val | sudo tee ${sys}/bri*;" bindsym XF86KbdBrightnessDown exec "sys='/sys/class/leds/*backlight';\ bri=$(cat ${sys}/bri*); max=$(cat ${sys}/max*);\ val=$(($bri - $max / 32)); val=$(($val < 0 ? 0 : $val));\ echo $val | sudo tee ${sys}/bri*;" bindsym XF86KbdBrightnessUp exec "sys='/sys/class/leds/*backlight';\ bri=$(cat ${sys}/bri*); max=$(cat ${sys}/max*);\ val=$(($bri + $max / 32)); val=$(($val > $max ? $max : $val));\ echo $val | sudo tee ${sys}/bri*;" The only annoying things is that you will need to add NOPASSWD sudoers entries separately for: /usr/bin/tee /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness and /usr/bin/tee /sys/class/leds/*/brightness These are the only complex part of my i3config, it might seem a bit lengthy compared to installing xbacklight but for me that tool could only ever fake it by changing the pixels rather than the backlight (on every piece of hardware I have tried). The nice thing about scripting /sys/class directly is that other than the permissions it is self contained and you can easily adapt above to any other stuff it presents on your particular piece of hardware. The value 32 is the number of divisions over the range, so it should be consistent across different hardware, but you may want to adjust it to taste still. ... awaiting more golfing like a sed oneliner :P i wrote this quite a long time ago.

cyberbanjo 7y ago

This sounds great. I've used an i3 dmenu setup and is was nice. Re configuring however sounds unpleasant.